HOUSE BACKS PLAN TO AVERT SHUTDOWN
GOP speaker’s plan gets strong support from Democrats
House Speaker Mike Johnson was forced Tuesday to rely on Democratic votes as the House passed legislation to keep federal funding flowing into early 2024, after scores of Republicans opposed his plan to avert a government shutdown at the end of the week.
Almost all Democrats and a majority of Republicans overcame the opposition of GOP conservatives to approve the bill under special expedited procedures that required a supermajority. That approach, hatched by Johnson in his first weeks as speaker, amounted to a gamble that a substantial number of Democrats would rally to help pass a package that Johnson’s own members were unwilling to back.
The vote was 336-95, clearing the two-thirds threshold required for passage. In the end, 209 Democrats and 127 Republicans joined to pass the bill. Ninety-three Republicans opposed it, as did two Democrats.
The final tally vividly reflected a dynamic that dogged both Johnson and his predecessor, Speaker Kevin McCarthy: The House GOP lacks the political will to keep the government funded, forcing its leaders, operating with only a tiny majority, to rely on Democratic votes to do so or face the political backlash for a shutdown.
The Senate is expected to pass the legislation and
send it to President Joe Biden’s desk within days. Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, told reporters that he wanted the Senate to vote on the bill “as soon as possible.”
Despite criticism of the Johnson plan by the White House when it was released last weekend, Schumer said he had consulted with the administration and “both of us agreed, the White House and myself, that if this can avoid a shutdown, it will be a good thing.”
Approval of the bill
means that government services will continue uninterrupted through the holiday season into early next year, staving off another selfimposed crisis just before Thanksgiving.
But it buys Congress only a few more months before lawmakers find themselves in the same situation again. And the deep divisions among Republicans over government spending levels will not be easily resolved in the weeks to come.
The legislation would fund federal agencies at current
spending levels with two different expiration dates: Jan. 19 for one set of government programs and Feb. 2 for another set. That timing would allow lawmakers more time to try to finish off the individual annual spending bills, as many conservatives have demanded. The bill did not include any military aid to Israel and Ukraine.
Johnson hailed the legislation as having broken an increasingly common practice in Washington of funding the government with one huge
spending bill, known as an omnibus, a routine conservatives have long derided.
“We are not going to have a massive omnibus spending bill right before Christmas,” Johnson said. “That is a gift to the American people. Because that is no way to legislate. It is not good stewardship.”
In the days leading up to this week’s funding deadline, some hard-liners in Johnson’s conference had suggested that Republicans should let the government shut down and use that as leverage to try to force lower spending levels.
That was an argument that Johnson might have accepted as a rank-and-file member. In September, he was among a significant minority of Republicans who opposed the stopgap spending bill advanced by McCarthy that led to his ouster.
But in his first major test as speaker, a post he won just three weeks ago, Johnson quickly moved to pull the government back from the brink of a shutdown, using the same formula that prompted his predecessor’s downfall.
“I want to cut spending right now and I would like to put policy riders” on the bill, he said. “But when you have a three-vote majority — as we do right now — we don’t have the votes. So what we need to do is avoid the government shutdown.”
Democrats had previously panned the idea of a government funding bill that staggered funding for different agencies. But they ultimately supported the bill in the interest of averting a painful shutdown. They said they were relieved that Johnson had advanced a spending plan that neither cut funding for federal programs nor conditioned it on new policy measures.
“We have consistently made clear that a government shutdown would hurt the economy, our national security and everyday Americans during a very fragile time and must be avoided,” top Democrats wrote in a statement before the vote, led by Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the minority leader.